When you get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom, you expect to find a toilet and hopefully some toilet paper.

What you do not expect to find is a spider the size of your fist in the sink.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. It was probably the size of a large meatball - a meatball the size of Texas!

Even so, a meatball-sized spider clearly belongs in the rainforest or the desert or a Harry Potter movie - not in a suburban bathroom.

Yet there it was, hanging out in my sink like it had as much right to be there as the tube of toothpaste next to it.

Typically when I discover something prehistoric with six legs or more living in our house, I handle it with about as much composure as one can when they are screaming their head off like a little girl.

The good news was, this time I wasn’t the person who went to the bathroom in the middle of the night and discovered Spiderzilla in the sink.

This time it was my husband.

And seriously, who knew my husband could scream like a girl?

I was actually surprised because my husband is kind of like the Bug Whisperer when it comes to wildlife. He is the first guy to run into the house and drag us outside to see a cool spiderweb. He gets up close to bumblebees to watch them pollinate flowers and he picks up cicada shells to explain molting to the kids. He is my go-to guy when there is something inhabiting our house that clearly does not belong there, such as mice, crickets and sometimes, our children. With all this in mind, it was shocking to wake up from a sound sleep to hear my husband shriek “Holy cow,” run out of the bathroom, and slam the door behind him.

“Wassa matter?” I asked groggily.

“There is a wolf spider in the sink,” he stammered breathlessly.

“So get rid of it,” I murmured. He was The Bug Guy. I didn’t see the problem.

“I can’t,” he said. “It’s HUGE. It’s got, like, 10 eyes!”

I sat up in bed and looked from my husband to the bathroom door. Then I looked at the space between the bottom of the bathroom door and the floor. Was it big enough to allow a monster spider to slip through and devour our family? I was pretty sure it was.

I jumped up and pushed my husband toward the bathroom.

“It is your duty as the patriarch of this family to safeguard us against all threats: animal, mineral and giant man-eating spider. Be a man and go do your job!” Then I jumped back into bed and pulled the covers over my head. The spider could eat my husband and the kids first. By then he would probably be too full to ingest me.

Page 2 of 2 - My husband stared uncertainly at the bathroom and then, squared his shoulders and marched purposefully toward the door. As he entered the bathroom, I peered out from under the covers. Suddenly, he came bursting out of the bathroom with a large wad of toilet paper in his hands.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked.

“I’m taking the spider outside,” he replied.

“Just flush it,” I responded.

“No. I can’t kill it,” he said. “I’m going to set it free.”

The Bug Whisperer ran down the stairs, opened the front door, and disappeared into the night to release the monster spider back into the wild. At first I was relieved to know Spiderzilla was out of the house. But then I wondered how my husband would be able to tell, in the dark, if the spider actually disembarked from the wad of toilet paper, or would climb up his arm and hitch a ride back into the house.

Climbing out of bed, I went downstairs and peered out the door window to where my husband was shaking out the toilet paper.

“What a good man,” I thought. “Such a great husband and father.”

Then, with hardly a second thought, I locked the door.

To become a fan of Lost in Suburbia on Facebook, go to http://www.facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage.